MAGACON (Malaysian Games Convention) 2012

In an attempt to get more involved with blogging activities from now on, I was given the opportunity from the good people of Nuffnang to join the biggest gaming convention in Malaysia, the Malaysian Games Convention (MAGACON) 2012, and get involve in some serious gaming experience!

[MAGACON baby!]

Of course with an event like this, the inner geek in me would NEVER say no on attending and sure enough, I even got resident fitness blogger Ash to join in with me to help out with the games there (my first thought was TeamTT geek blogger StormyZaaba but he is in London at the moment). As we made our way to Publika, I suddenly remembered what we had to do at the event.

[Nuffnang bloggers getting briefed on our quests]

For all the participants there, we were all given a quest to complete to win some prizes. As the general public are required to finish a set of games as fast as possible, we bloggers we given a different set of tasks to complete which are:

1. Compete in tag team "free for all" tourney on Call of Duty. Each member of the partnership plays a 10 minute round of CoD and rankings will be given respective point for each player.

2. Compete with another pair on a life sized Jenga block. The higher the tower, the more points you get.

3. Compete with the general public (as part of THEIR quest) on any games available

Now this is where it got a little ugly for Team Teh Tarik. For most of the time, my objective in coming to events like this is really to either disturb the other contestants or make a fool out of myself to disguise the fact that I absolutely suck in games like this (people like Tony who have met me in events like this would know my antics very well....). And in most circumstances, I would have a reliable gaming pro as my partner but today, Ash was with me and his mentality was in the EXACT same position as I am.

So on paper, we were the two donkeys that had no hope of winning.

and was there to make as much noise as possible.

[First up: Call of Duty 4!]

and so, we shuffled along to our first match up and boy we were extremely worried.

[Team Teh Tarik warming up for the match]

As far as I am concerned, my only experiences in First Person Shooter games would be the number of hours clocked in Counter Striker almost ten years ago. Which means that my skills would be as outdated as the guns that they have in the game (somehow I still prefer spraying with the sub machine gun MP5 Navy) and competing with season gamers from the Nuffnang crowd, I am completely screwed.

[oh crap...]

As the game started I got myself comfortable and relied on whatever reflex skills I got for this. However I was surprised that the game allowed the player to easily adapt to the game which was a huge plus on my end. My tactical "run-shoot-run again-shoot-scream like a girl" method of doing things actually paid of and I finished off my round on second place!

[Ash setting up for his turn]

This rallied up the more experienced Ash for his turn and boy was he killing it! Run and kill was the flavor of his game and was ranking up the top spot in no time. However I kinda forgot to tell him that we had to play computer games today so he got a bit dizzy and lost his game halfway because he didn't have his glasses with him. In the end, he too finished at a staggering second place in his round!

So for our second round we were pit against the team of Nana-Eddyand at that point, we put our head down to actually attempt and win something out of this. However, both teams were raring to get the best of it and because of this, we actually built one of the tallest Jenga towers in the competition WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT! Not bad for a law graduate pretending to be an engineer by working in and engineering company and a man who has never seen a Jenga block in his entire life!

At this point we were so focused, we completely forgotten to take pictures! -.-'

Finally was the general public challenge.

The people who are going for the general quest must challenge a Nuffnang blogger to any games.

And the one that challenged me was none other than the ever awesome Nuffie Sdr Muhaymin!

[Our battle ensued in FIFA 13!]

Despite my best effort of putting a good show, I was whipped like the family horse by him in our football game. I would want to say I gave him a chance to win but honestly, I gave everything and he was that damn good. Kudos bro!

Unfortunately I heard that some bloggers got treated very badly by some of the contestant, pushing and shoving us to move faster and even to some point trying to cheat just to win. Honestly sometimes there are some that really forget the true nature of events like this and would throw out common courtesy to others just to win a game. Shocking...

And thus our tasks were done! While waiting for our results, I took the opportunity to walk around and enjoy the sights and sounds of the convention.

[We had Dath Vader walking around the floor....]

[... and decided to challenge some mortal on a fighting game]

[Tony decided to challenge his gf Iris to XBox Kinect danceoff. From the way he shook his bon-bon, he may have won that challenge]

So as the day pass, it was time for the moment of truth for all the bloggers there which was the announcement of winners for the bloggers challenge. Ash and I was worried as we really did put everything we got during the second round and there were some extremely strong contenders.

To our extreme surprise, we got FIRST PLACE!

[Team Teh Tarik FTW!]

And so, that concluded an exciting yet rather surprising day for the both of us, much thanks to the awesome organizers from MAGACON 2012 for an awesome day. This shows that despite the time and age, one can never truly let his inner child go, especially when you're that big gaming geek!

Thanks for the awesome day guys and look forward to coming back again next year!